What is a true genius mathematician? The genius played by Matt Damon in the movie "Mindcatcher"? In fact, there are more awesome things in history: he can learn "Higher Mathematics" overnight in elementary school, he can publish and prove the quadratic reciprocal rate (golden rule) at the age of 19, and he can complete the "Arithmetic Research" that shocked the world in just a few months at the age of 23... He was Gauss, the Prince of Mathematics.
The other is the geographer Humboldt, who is recognized as the founder of physical geography, and he first proposed most of the concepts in our middle school geography textbooks. He was the first to define the concepts of isothermals, isobaric lines, continental and oceanic climates.
When I was in high school, I was tormented by Gauss's theorem and I often wondered why there was such a person as Gauss, and why didn't he disappear? Humboldt was even more terrible, I could not learn the monsoon wind and ocean currents, and directly gave up the liberal arts to study science.
Until I read this book one day, Measuring the World, my views on these two people changed. The author of the book is the famous German contemporary writer Daniel Keeman, who has dominated the German best-seller list for nearly a year since its publication in 2005, and then caused a huge sensation in Europe and the world, and is considered to be the most successful German novel in recent years.
Measuring the World book
This book is not a book about science, you have nothing difficult to understand in the book except for some scientific terms, it is very easy and pleasant to read, and even these terms you must have been exposed to in high school. The book is set in the golden age of Continental thought, when the stars were shining and almost blinding, Weber, Gauss, Humboldt, Presty, Darwin, Hertz, Goethe, Kant, Schiller, this list can last a long time... Let's take a look at how these two Prussian geniuses with very different personalities came together and measured the world.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01 John Karl Friedrich Gauss</h1>
All the friends who study mathematics, there is no one who does not know Gauss, I am not good at mathematics, I do not know how many times I have cursed him in circles. Even if you didn't study mathematics, you must have heard the story of Gauss who quickly calculated the result from 1 plus to 100 when he was a child.
Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss 1777-1855
When Gauss was very young, how small, 8 years old. Their math teacher, Bitner, can be said to be a pervert who loves to beat people. Often assign difficult and a lot of homework, and if you can't finish it, you will be beaten.
That day, the teacher assigned a new assignment, adding up all the natural numbers from 1 to 100, which counted for several hours. And Gauss Jr., after three minutes, figured it out. 1+100=101,2+99=101...... There are 50 pairs in total, and the answer is 5050.
Measuring the World film
The teacher threw Gauss a copy of Higher Mathematics and asked him to take it home to study, and the next day Gauss returned with the book and said that he had finished learning. Gauss's teacher then beat gauss badly, writing:
He looked blankly at Gauss. He knew perfectly well that he was not a good teacher, neither competent nor specialized. However, the situation is now this: if Gauss cannot enter the higher liberal arts secondary school, then his life will be in vain. He looked at Gauss with a complicated expression, and then, presumably to suppress his excitement, he raised his whip—Gauss had been beaten for the last time of his life.
The math teacher recommended Gauss to the middle school, and Gauss, who was poor and could have worked hard in the spinning workshop, embarked on his path as a mathematician. In secondary school he was recommended to the Duke of Brunswick, and Gauss received a grant from the Duke of Brunswick and went further and further down the path of mathematical research.
In life, Gauss was an "otaku" who particularly hated to travel far, he believed in the language of mathematics, and although many of the inspirations written about Gauss in the book came from the real world, mathematics itself was very pure, and it could be detached from various experiences in the real world. The novel opens with Gauss being invited to a meeting of natural scientists in Berlin, where Gauss is afraid to go out and procrastinates, and is finally stuffed into a carriage by his wife and son.
Almost all of his research was done in hiding in a study, and Gauss's process of writing The Study of Arithmetic was amazing, described in the book:
When he started again, inspiration poured out with unprecedented power. He slept very little, stopped going to college, ate only a little, and rarely went to see his mother. As he whispered down the street, he felt more awake than ever. He avoids people without looking and never stumbles. Once he jumped away for no reason, and at this moment, a roof tile shattered beside him, and he was not surprised at all. The numbers did not kidnap him from reality, they brought it closer, made it clearer, clearer than ever.
Thus, on an ordinary rainy day, Gauss finished his Study of Arithmetic in Latin, ending the systemless state of number theory before the nineteenth century. This year, Gauss was only 23 years old.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02 Alexander von Humboldt</h1>
Unlike Gauss, Humboldt was born into an aristocratic family and had an older brother. He was the godson of the Duke of Brunswick, and you read that right, the Duke of Brunswick, who funded Gaussian research. Humboldt received a good education from an early age.
Alexander von Humboldt 1769-1859
Fifteen well-paid experts gave college-level lectures to the brothers. He taught his younger brother chemistry, physics, and mathematics, and his brother language and literature, and both learned Greek, Latin, and philosophy. Twelve hours a day, every day, without rest and holidays.
Humboldt's mother wanted the two brothers to study economics and embark on a career path. But Humboldt's interest in the natural sciences was clearly greater than his rise to fame. Unlike Gauss, Humboldt was a man who vowed to "walk through thousands of mountains and rivers" and embraced empiricism. After the death of his mother, he inherited the inheritance, was freed, and obtained permission from Spain to visit and travel to the Spanish colonies in the Americas.
For Humboldt, seeing a hill without knowing its height is an insult to reason and will make him sleep. Humboldt embraced the attitude of "walking through thousands of mountains and rivers", obsessed with measuring the height of every mountain he had seen, the depth of each river, measuring air temperature, air pressure, humidity, tides...
After six months of his stay in New Andalusia, Humboldt investigated everything that had no legs and would not be afraid to avoid him. He measured the color of the sky, the temperature of lightning, and the level of the night frost. He had tasted bird droppings, examined the shaking of the earth's surface, and dived into the caves of the dead.
He had encountered a tsunami during a maritime expedition to the New World, and everyone else was afraid. He had him tied to the boat and stayed very excited all day, almost drowning several times, just to measure the height of the tsunami. In addition, when he encountered a rare volcano about to erupt, he asked someone to hang him into the crater with a hanging basket, and he had to observe the volcano carefully. This is to rely on their own experience to come up with scientific results Humboldt, it is crazy.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >03 has not stopped measuring the world</h1>
Gauss was a scruffy runny-nosed otaku, and it didn't prevent him from studying mathematics in almost all fields, number theory, algebra, non-Euclidean geometry... He also applied his research to astronomy, electromagnetism, geodesy, measured the trajectory of stars, predicted the position of Ceres and Homo sapiens; measured more than 1 million data in geodetic work; collaborated with Weber to invent the first telegraph machine and draw the first map of the Earth's magnetic field...
Humboldt devoted his life to the natural sciences, and devoted all his time to measurement, because he truly loved science, was full of curiosity, and engaged in research as a manifestation of his inner independent will. For this reason, he never married a wife, and even now he is a virgin.
Although the two scientists have different painting styles, one hides in the study and is good at calculation, good at reasoning, and hates to leave home the most. A person who believes in measurement as reality and experience as truth, treads through thousands of rivers and mountains. They did their research in the opposite way, and in the end miraculously moved towards the same goal: measuring the world.